Creator is complying with requests to remove content

Indie game The Stanley Parable is under fire by fans and critics for some controversial content included within. Creator Davey Wreden has received several requests to remove or alter the content in question, in which a man is depicted setting a young child on fire.

In 1697 William Congreve coined the phrase, “Hell has no fury like a woman scorned”, though in 2012 its starting to look like “indie” might also be an acceptable substitution. The controversy surrounds EA’s use of the words “indie bundle” in their most recent Steam sale, and real indies have been lashing out at the company from every angle.

Piracy is a problem for game developers of all sizes, and is an issue that continues to plague the industry. How each studio chooses to handle the inevitable horde of people willing to rip them off however varies pretty dramatically. Companies such as Ubisoft have chosen to tackle the problem by layering on gobs of restrictive DRM, while other more creative Indie developers have chosen a new approach, humiliation.

For us, strategy games tend to be never-ending spirals of regret and woe. Don’t get us wrong—we love the genre. But our approach to tactics usually goes something like this: “OK, now you go here and... oops. Everything we love is on fire.” Put simply, mistakes happen. Frozen Synapse, however, allows us to make informed mistakes. In a nutshell, the game lets you see the outcome of your moves before you make them. It’s an absolutely brilliant tweak, and—if you’re a perfectionist—both a dream come true and your greatest nightmare.

We've seen some things, man. We've watched men's lights flicker and go out after our bullets won a fairly lopsided battle against their internal organs. We've... er, also done other things involving guns, evil men, and the color gray. So we've seen a lot of the same things, is what we suppose we're saying. Depressing, right? No, not really. This is what PC gaming's super awesome, unendingly creative indie scene is for. On today's menu: a “roguelike shooter” with hints of Zelda from half the team that whipped up Super Meat Boy and a new spin on Minecraft that trades Legos for full-on sculpting.

If Comcast’s 105Mbps service costs $199.95 per month (in select markets), then naturally 1Gbps service should cost around $2,000 a month right? Well according to scrappy independent ISP sonic.net, $69.99 sounds much more reasonable, and they plan to put their money where their mouth is. The company has committed to rolling out 1Gbps fiber service to around 700 homes in the Sebastopol California area, and will study the results over the next few months to prove that its possible to offer such a high tier of service for $70, and still remain profitable.

Rome wasn't built in a day, but Minecraft creator Markus Persson's fortune was. And continues to be. The indie building sensation – which turns players loose in a world full of angry beasts that go bump in the night and challenges them to build if they want to survive – quickly found its way to roughly 4,000 copies sold per day. Impressive, huh? No, not really, as it turns out. At least, not when compared to September 22, when – if sales were already on fire – they finally up and exploded.

Prior to that, developer Mojang was forced to offer the game for free for couple days while it mended its busted servers, which finally snapped under the pressure of supporting such a rapidly growing game. The result of that unintentional appetizer? Everyone wanted to get their hands on the main course. And so, in one day, sales skyrocketed to 26,000 copies – a grand total of roughly $350,000. That – for those of you who still have one more “woah” hovering on the tip of your tongue and need somewhere to aim it – means roughly one copy sold every three seconds.

The best part? Persson's pretty much a one-man show. And even though 26,000 is still the record, sales have mostly hovered between 15,000 and 10,000 per day ever since. So, how's the surprise winner of the game development lottery taking his newfound mountain of money?

"It all feels unreal. I thought I could make a living from the game, but I did not expect to become rich,” Persson said in a recent interview.

Garage bands, practiced shower singers, local sensations, and other unsigned artists can now get paid through Last.fm's Artist Royalty Progam (ARP). Last.fm announced the service back in a January, and this week the service went live. More than 450,000 tracks have been uploaded to coincide with the launch, and independent artists who register and upload tunes can start accruing royalties any time their songs get played through the site's ad-supported streaming music feature or Web radio.

Martin Stiksel, Last.fm co-founder, said "This is a bid day for independent artists. We're leveling the playing field by offering them the same opportunities as established bands to make money from their music. The young musician making music in a bedroom studio has the same chance as the latest major label signing to use Last.fm to build an audience and get rewarded. The Artist Royalty Program is another revolutionary step towards helping musicians take control of their music -- and, more importantly, make a living from it."

Click through the jump to find out who's urging indie labels to steer clear of the royalty program.